Runaway Inequality
leads to a permanent oligarchy
How does runaway inequality lead directly to a permanent oligarchy, whose wealth dwarfs that of any other society in human history? It’s simple. Allow the criminally wealthy to transfer their entire ill-gotten gains to their progeny.
Taxes on wealth, including an inheritance tax, are the only way that nations, particularly the United States, can begin to reverse runaway inequality. No ifs, ands or buts.
Call it radical; call it revolutionary, but it’s the only way that we can survive. It is time to expropriate the expropriators!
The first article from Nation of Change describes in detail how this is a global crisis, and “inequality emergency”. The US has over 1100 billionaires; together, they’re worth about $5.7 trillion. They are getting richer by the minute, literally. Together they own more wealth than the bottom half of American families combined. And it is getting worse (even before Trump). The top 1% of Americans increased their share of the wealth from 23% in 1990 to 31% in 2024, even before the policies of the current administration went into effect.
As the second article documents, those policies have effective increased the concentration of wealth at the very top. This concentration has come at the expense of bottom 90% as the third article points out. How are those at the bottom of the economic ladder survived. By cutting back on things like medical insurance and care, but also by going deeper and deeper into DEBT.
The third article, originally from Dollars and Sense, points out rising inequality is in large part a product of wage stagnation. This is due to two interrelated factors; the decline in union membership and the failure to raise the federal minimum wage. As a result the historic connection between increases in productivity and higher wages has been broken and the benefits of the accrued productivity have been expropriated by the 1%.
Where can we go from here? The last article begins to point the way, as did the Nov. 4th election. We need candidates like Graham Platner, running as Democrats or Independents, to put forth a strong left populist agenda, and we need them now!
In my next post I delve into the alternatives, both short and long term.
#1 - From Nation of Change, by Alexis Sterling, Nov. 4, 2025
Inherited wealth boom puts a spotlight on a global inequality emergency
As the G20 prepares to meet in Johannesburg, experts warn that more than $70 trillion set to change hands will entrench wealth gaps and threaten democracy without coordinated action.
The world is facing what economists are calling an “inequality emergency.” A panel of international experts led by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has warned that the richest people on Earth are capturing a disproportionate share of global wealth and preparing to pass it down to their heirs—largely untaxed—further widening the gap between the few who hold immense fortunes and the billions left behind.
The new report, commissioned by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and released ahead of the upcoming G20 meetings in Johannesburg, found that over $70 trillion in wealth will be transferred to heirs over the next decade. In the next 30 years, the panel estimates that 1,000 billionaires will transfer more than $5.2 trillion to their heirs mostly untaxed.
“Inequality is one of the most urgent concerns in the world today, generating many other problems in economies, societies, polities and the environment,” the report states. “Inequality is not a given; combating it is necessary and possible. Inequality results from policy choices that reflect ethical attitudes and morals, as well as economic trade-offs. It is not just a matter of concern for individual countries, but a global concern that should be on the international agenda—and therefore the G20’s.”
The panel, formally called the Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality, includes Stiglitz along with Adriana Abdenur of Brazil, Winnie Byanyima of Uganda, Jayati Ghosh of India, and Imraan Valodia and Wanga Zembe-Mkabile of South Africa.
The committee’s findings show how sharply the concentration of wealth has increased in recent decades. Since 2000, the world’s top one percent has captured more than 40 percent of all new wealth, while the bottom half of humanity saw its wealth grow by just one percent. The panel reports that more than 80 percent of countries—accounting for roughly 90 percent of the global population—now experience high levels of income inequality.
The report warns that the consequences of this inequality extend far beyond economics, undermining social cohesion, economic functioning, and democratic stability. It cites evidence that countries with high inequality are seven times more likely to experience democratic decline than more equal countries.
The experts attribute much of the problem to inherited wealth, which they say compounds inequality across generations. They note that a groundbreaking study by Italian economist Salvatore Morelli found that as much as $70 trillion of wealth will be passed to the next generations by 2035. “Wealth inequalities have a forward momentum, as compound interest increases fortunes and, in the absence of effective inheritance taxes, wealth is handed down from one generation to another, undermining social mobility and economic efficiency,” the report says.
Stiglitz and his colleagues argue that the global system has allowed wealth accumulation to expand without sufficient checks, concentrating economic and political power in fewer hands. “The committee’s work showed us that inequality is a crisis in need of concerted action,” Stiglitz said Tuesday. “The necessary step to taking this action is for policymakers, political leaders, the private sector, journalists and academia to have accurate and timely information and analysis of the inequality crisis. This is why our recommendation above all is for a new International Panel on Inequality.”
According to Stiglitz, this new institution would serve as a permanent global body to monitor inequality, similar to how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tracks the scientific understanding of global warming. “It would learn from the remarkable job the IPCC has done for climate change, bringing together technical expertise worldwide to track inequality and assess what is driving it,” he said.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa endorsed the committee’s report and said it provides a strong foundation for reform. He called the findings “a blueprint for greater equality” and said they support South Africa’s goal of making inequality a central issue at the G20. “Inequality is a betrayal of people’s dignity, an impediment to inclusive growth and a threat to democracy itself,” Ramaphosa said. “Addressing inequality is our inescapable generational challenge. This report lays out prudent and pragmatic steps we can take to reduce it.”
The report’s recommendations include ensuring fair taxation of multinational corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals, adopting antitrust policies to curb corporate concentration, and making major investments in public services. The experts emphasize that these measures are not only feasible but essential to prevent global inequality from reaching destabilizing levels.
The G20 meetings later this month will provide an opportunity for world leaders to decide whether inequality becomes a permanent focus of international economic governance. The G20 was established after the 2008 banking crash to be a more representative group than the G7, incorporating both industrialized and emerging economies such as Saudi Arabia, Mexico, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Campaigners expect several G20 nations, including Germany, to support the creation of a permanent inequality monitoring body.
Stiglitz, who serves as a professor at Columbia University and chairs the independent committee, said the proposed panel would “monitor trends and assess its consequences and evaluate alternative policies for addressing it, to inform governments, policymakers, and the international community.”
The report’s authors also make clear that inequality is not inevitable. “Inequality is not a given; combating it is necessary and possible,” they write. “Inequality results from policy choices that reflect ethical attitudes and morals, as well as economic trade-offs.”
The report argues that with accurate monitoring, political will, and fairer taxation, the global community can prevent inequality from eroding social stability and democracy. Stiglitz said that policymakers must see inequality not just as an economic issue, but as a crisis that threatens the world’s future.
By the end of the decade, the experts warn, the massive transfer of wealth from today’s billionaires to their heirs could further entrench economic divides unless the global community acts. For now, the committee’s message to the G20 is clear: the concentration of wealth is accelerating, the risks are mounting, and global inequality is a policy choice.
#2 - From Common Dreams, by Jake Johnson, Nov. 3, 2025
10 Richest Americans Have Gained $700 Billion in Wealth Since Trump Reelection
“The new American oligarchy is here,” said the CEO of Oxfam America. “Billionaires and mega-corporations are booming while working families struggle to afford housing, healthcare, and groceries.”
New research published Monday shows that the 10 richest people in the United States have seen their collective fortune grow by nearly $700 billion since President Donald Trump secured a second term in the White House and rushed to deliver more wealth to the top in the form of tax cuts.
The billionaire wealth surge that has accompanied Trump’s return to power is part of a decades-long, policy-driven trend of upward redistribution that has enriched the very few and devastated the working class, Oxfam America details in Unequal: The Rise of a New American Oligarchy and the Agenda We Need.
Between 1989 and 2022, the report shows, the least rich US household in the top 1% gained 987 times more wealth than the richest household in the bottom 20%.
As of last year, more than 40% of the US population was considered poor or low-income, Oxfam observed. In 2025, the share of total US assets owned by the wealthiest 0.1% reached its highest level on record: 12.6%.
The Trump administration—in partnership with Republicans in Congress—has added rocket fuel to the nation’s out-of-control inequality, moving “with staggering speed and scale to carry out a relentless attack on working-class families” while using “the power of the office to enrich the wealthy and well-connected,” Oxfam’s new report states.
“The data confirms what people across our nation already know instinctively: The new American oligarchy is here,” said Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America. “Billionaires and mega-corporations are booming while working families struggle to afford housing, healthcare, and groceries.”
“Now, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress risk turbocharging that inequality as they wage a relentless attack on working people and bargain with livelihoods during the government shutdown,” Maxman added. “But what they’re doing isn’t new. It’s doubling down on decades of regressive policy choices. What’s different is how much undemocratic power they’ve now amassed.”
Oxfam released its report as the Trump administration continued to illegally withhold federal nutrition assistance from tens of millions of low-income US households just months after enacting a budget law that’s expected to deliver hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to ultra-rich Americans and large corporations.
Given the severity of US inequality and ongoing Trump-GOP efforts to make it worse, Oxfam stressed that a bold agenda “that focuses on rebalancing power” will be necessary to reverse course.
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Such an agenda would include—but not be limited to—a wealth tax on multimillionaires and billionaires, a higher corporate tax rate, a permanently expanded child tax credit, strong antitrust policy that breaks up corporate monopolies, a federal job guarantee, universal childcare, and a substantially higher minimum wage.
“Today, we are seeing the dark extremes of choosing inequality for 50 years,” Elizabeth Wilkins, president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, wrote in her foreword to the report. “The policy priorities in this report—rebalancing power, unrigging the tax code, reimagining the social safety net, and supporting workers’ rights—are all essential to creating that more inclusive and cohesive society. Together, they speak to our deepest needs as human beings: to live with security and agency, to live free from exploitation.”
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#3 - From Portside (original source Dollars & Sense) by Robert Pollin, Nov. 3, 2025
Wage Stagnation vs. Living Wages for U.S. Workers Today
Far from earning living wages, most U.S. workers have experienced wage stagnation since the 1970s--a trend largely obscured by political rhetoric and misinformation.
At the end of last August, President Donald Trump asserted that average wages for U.S. workers had risen by $546 during the first six months since he returned to office in January 2025. As with virtually all of Trump’s pronouncements, this one bears little relationship to the truth. In fact, when using the most reliable government data on wages and then controlling for inflation, workers’ wages did still rise under Trump, but by $26—that’s 95% less than the $546 average pay raise proclaimed by Trump.
The reality of wage stagnation under Trump is fully consistent with his broader attack on working people. As just one example, the labor historian Joseph McCartin called Trump’s move in March to cancel the union rights of more than one million federal government workers “by far the largest single action of union-busting in American history.”
Still worse is that wage stagnation to date under Trump follows what is now a 50-year pattern. In 1973, the average nonsupervisory employee earned $29.15 an hour (in 2024 dollars). As of 2024, that average wage was $30.13. Over the same time period, the average productivity of U.S. workers—the average value of what they produce when they show up at work—rose by 150%. If these workers had received raises every year between 1973 and 2024 just equal to their increased productivity, but not a penny more, their average hourly pay today would be $72.88 an hour.
To further clarify the current pay levels for nonsupervisory workers, compare their current average hourly wage of $30.13 with what we could consider a living wage standard. There are various ways in which one can define what we mean by a living wage. In A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of a Consumer Society, Lawrence Glickman defines the term qualitatively, as being a wage level that offers workers “the ability to support families, to maintain self-respect and to have both the means and leisure to participate in the civic life of the nation.”
A research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has produced a Living Wage Calculator that provides detailed annual quantitative estimates of living wage standards for every state and county in the United States, as measured relative to the cost of living in each area. Their definition of what constitutes a living wage in a given community is less ambitious than the standard suggested by Glickman. Specifically, according to the MIT Calculator’s definition, “The living wage is the basic income standard that, if met, draws a very fine line between the financial independence of the working poor and the need to seek out public assistance or suffer consistent and severe housing and food insecurity. In light of this fact, the living wage is perhaps better defined as a minimum subsistence wage for persons living in the United States.”
Working from this lower-end but still reasonable definition, the MIT researchers estimate living wages for various family household types, including those with one or two adults and between zero to three children. For example, their living wage estimates at the state level for family households with one adult and one child range between a low of $32.62 an hour in Mississippi and a high of $55.15 an hour in Massachusetts. These figures yield the striking result that even the low-end Mississippi living wage of $32.62 an hour is 8% above the $30.13 average now being earned by nonsupervisory workers in the United States. The $55.15 Massachusetts living wage is 83% higher than the current average hourly wage of $30.13.
Since the early 1990s a strong political movement in the United States has fought to establish living wage standards at the municipal and state levels. The movement has achieved some significant successes. Between 1994 and 2010, living wage laws were enacted in over 125 cities and counties. At the state level, 30 states and Washington, D.C., now have minimum wage rates above the poverty-level federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. Washington State has the highest state-level minimum wage at $16.66 an hour. The minimum wage for Washington, D.C., is still higher, at $17.95 an hour.
Yet these state and city living wage rates remain uniformly well below even the MIT Calculator’s lower-end standards. Given the broader 50-year pattern of wage stagnation in the United States, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the living wage movement has not been successful enough, despite great efforts by thousands of organizers and activists throughout the country.
Under Trump, we can only expect more of the same outright lies and vicious assaults on workers’ rights, job opportunities, and living standards. It is therefore now imperative to revive the living wage movement throughout the country. A ramped-up living wage movement can become one important force contributing to the resistance against Trump and Trumpism. More fundamentally still, a revived living wage movement can be a means for building working class power and, with that power, delivering pay levels for nonsupervisory wages that—after 50 years of U.S. wage stagnation—can reach true living wage standards.
#4 - From Common Dreams, by Jon Queally, 11/15/2025
Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner Says ‘Nobody Works Hard Enough to Justify $1 Billion’
“I refuse to believe that in a state like Maine where people work as hard as we do here, that it is merely hard work that gets you that kind of success. We all know it isn’t. We all know it’s the structures. It’s the tax code.”
Echoing recent viral comments by music superstar Billie Eilish, Maine Democratic candidate for US Senate Graham Planter is also arguing that the existence of billionaires cannot be justified in a world where working-class people with multiple jobs still cannot afford the basic necessities of life.
In video clip posted Friday of a campaign event in the northern town of Caribou from last month, Platner rails against the “structures” of an economy in which billionaires with vast personal fortunes use their wealth to bend government—including the tax code—to conform to their interests while working people are left increasingly locked out of controlling their own destinies, both materially and politically.
“Nobody works hard enough to justify $1 billion,” the military veteran and oyster farmer told potential voters at the event. “Not in a world where I know people that have three jobs and can’t even afford their rent.”
With audience members nodding their heads in agreement, Platner continued by saying, “I refuse to believe that in a state like Maine, where people work as hard as we do here, that it is merely hard work that gets you that kind of success. We all know it isn’t. We all know it’s the structures. It’s the tax code. That is what allows that money to get accrued.”
The systemic reasons that create vast inequality, Platner continued, are also why he believes that the process of the super wealthy becoming richer and richer at the expense of working people can be reversed.
“The world that we live in today,” he explained, “is not organic. It is not natural. The political and economic world we have did not happen because it had to. It happened because politicians in Washington and the billionaires who write the policies that they pushed made this happen. They changed the laws, and they made it legal to accrue as much wealth and power as they have now.”
The solution? “We need to make it illegal again to do that,” says Platner.
The comments questioning the justification for billionaires to even exist by Platner—though made in early October—echo more recent comments that went viral when spoken by Billie Eilish, a popular musician, who told a roomful of Wall Street movers and shakers in early November that they should do a better job reflecting on their outrageous wealth.
“Love you all, but there’s a few people in here that have a lot more money than me,” Eilish said during an award event in New York City. “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but yeah, give your money away, shorties.”
While those remarks took a long spin around the internet, Eilish on Friday doubled down on uncharitable billionaires by colorfully calling Elon Musk, who could end up being the world’s first trillionaire, a “fucking pathetic pussy bitch coward” for not donating more of his vast fortune, among the largest in the world, to humanitarian relief efforts.
This week, as Common Dreams reported, a coalition of economists and policy experts called for the creation of a new international body to address the global crisis of inequality.
Like Platner, the group behind the call—including economists like Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty, Ha-Joon Chang, and Jayati Ghosh—emphasized the inequality-as-a-policy-choice framework. Piketty, who has called for the mass taxation of dynastic wealth as a key part of the solution to runaway inequality, said “we are at a dangerous moment in human history” with “the very essence of democracy” under threat if something is not done.
On the campaign trail in Maine, Platner has repeatedly suggested that only organized people can defeat the power of the oligarchs, which he has named as the chief enemy of working people in his state and beyond. The working class, he said at a separate rally, “have an immense amount of power, but we only have it if we’re organized.”
“No one from above is coming to save us,” Platner said. “It’s up to us to organize, use our immense power as the working class, and win the world we deserve.”
From Common Dreams by Brad Reed, 11/24/2025
U-Turn by Establishment as Corporate Dem Guru Carville Pushes ‘Platform of Pure Economic Rage’
“It really is starting to feel like economic populists have won the debate.”
James Carville, a one-time political strategist for former President Bill Clinton who has long sparred with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, turned some heads on Monday when he appeared to embrace a more populist economic vision.
Writing in the New York Times, Carville argued that the American people “are pissed” by the state of the US economy, and that Democrats must now “run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression.”
“It is time for Democrats to embrace a sweeping, aggressive, unvarnished, unapologetic, and altogether unmistakable platform of pure economic rage,” Carville added. “This is our only way out of the abyss.”
While Carville then took a shot at the “era of performative woke politics from 2020 to 2024,” which he said “left a lasting stain on our brand, particularly with rural voters and male voters,” he said that Republicans’ total failure to address the affordability crisis has given Democrats a second chance to win them back with bold economic populism.
“In the richest country in the history of our planet, we should not fear raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour, which had a 74% approval rating in 2023,” he said. “We should not fear an America with free public college tuition, which 63% of US adults favored in a 2021 poll. When 62% of Americans say their electricity or gas bills have increased in the past year and 80% feel powerless to control their utility costs, we should not fear the idea of expanding rural broadband as a public utility. Or when 70% of Americans say raising children is too expensive, we should not fear making universal childcare a public good.”
Taken together, the longtime centrist Democratic strategist declared that “the era of half-baked political policy is over.”
Progressives who have long advocated for more economic populism cautiously welcomed Carville’s new approach, although they expressed skepticism that the Democratic Party was really ready to go in this direction.
“The Democratic Party has to decide if they will let folks build that table,” wrote former Democratic Ohio state Sen. Nina Turned on X. “For too long, the party has done everything to hurt the populist movement.”
David Sirota, founder of The Lever and one-time senior adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign, noted with amusement that Carville’s recommendations to Democrats had changed dramatically over the last few months.
Specifically, Sirota pointed to a editorial Carville wrote for the Times back in February where he recommended that the party “roll over and play dead,” while waiting for President Donald Trump and the GOP to inevitably implode from self-inflicted errors.
“He’s gone from demanding Dems play dead to demanding Dems be Bernie Sanders,” Sirota observed. “A good reminder that thumb-in-the-wind politicos with no principles will change their tune when others do the hard work of shifting the political environment.”
Gun violence prevention activist David Hogg, on the other hand, took the Carville op-ed as a hopeful sign that “times are changing.”
Climate advocate and attorney Aaron Regunberg also saw signs that Carville’s op-ed marked a turning point in Democratic Party conventional wisdom.
“It really is starting to feel like economic populists have won the debate,” he argued. “Our haters have become our waiters—time for us to all build a table of success for the Democratic Party.”